The area's prehistoric
inhabitants include the Fremont-Sevier agriculturalists who disappeared
around A.D. 1300. Mounds have yielded small stone- and mud-walled structures,
as well as pottery, points, and metates, but Sanpete has not been systematically
studied as have areas to the south and east. Ute chief Wakara enslaved
local San Pitch Indians, who gathered and hunted in the local marshes
and canyons. The Utes had adopted the horse and other trappings of Plains
Indian Culture and ranged widely from an apparent winter base in Sanpete
County. Wakara at first invited Mormon settlement, perhaps for the resources
it would bring, and then opposed it in a war of 1853-54, which caused
a period of "forting up" and the abandonment of area towns. The Black
Hawk War of 1865-68, a more serious and prolonged series of guerrilla
raids, also disrupted county settlement.
The first Mormon
settlers arrived in the area in the fall of 1849. They chose the Manti
site because of a nearby warm spring, the extensive limestone quarries
(later exploited commercially), and the fine farming and grazing lands
nearby. The county's larger towns were established in the first decade
of settlement. Scandinavian immigrants soon made up a sizable minority,
and elements of their culture and humor remain today. The towns peaked
in population from about 1900 to 1910, and then declined until the 1970s.
The county was created in 1850, enlarged, and then later reduced in
size.